Microsoft makes a lot of apps for multiple platforms. It also makes a lot of tools that are used by other developers to build apps for multiple platforms. It only makes sense then that the company would be interested in buying Xamarin, one of the leading platform providers for mobile app development.

While you may not have heard of Xamarin, its solution counts as one of the invisible threads that play a role in running the Internet nowadays. The platform helps developers use a shared codebase in C# to build, test, and monitor native apps for iOS, Android, and Windows, all with the same IDE, language, and APIs. It essentially makes life a lot easier for them so they can accelerate development and deployment across platforms.

Even though it's only 4 years old, Xamarin counts over 350 employees and over 15,000 customers (100 of which are Fortune 500 companies) in 120 countries. One of its partnerships was with Microsoft, where it integrated its solution in Visual Studio, Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and the Enterprise Mobility Suite. Now that partnership is moving to the next level thanks to this acquisition.

No price was disclosed, but both Microsoft and Xamarin seemed pretty happy and hopeful about the future in their respective blog posts. They'll be revealing more of their plans at Microsoft's Build conference in March and Xamarin Evolve in April.

Of all the cross platform solutions I've used I would have to say Xamarin is the best. However, nothing quite beats native app development.

jlangford

Hopefully they'll sort out their ludicrous pricing options then - With the current direction ms has taken, maybe even a linux port of xamarin studio?

Vorastra

I'm expecting either the indie licence to be bundled freely with VS Community or a new tier being created with some of the business license features added on to the indie license. Like a Business Lite/Indie+ or something.

Imparus

I really hate working with xamarin there are so many bug and annoyance with it, like "oh you didn't clean your project after making visual change in axml, well lets see if we remember to apply the change", then there are stuff such as it way to often screw up uninstalling correctly, when deploying debug application from another computer.

Hopefully Microsoft will do more to make it stable, now that they aren't just working together, but actually own them.

Robin Flikkema

Also, the price

Imparus

yeah the pricing is insane, at least it is free for student.

Mark

It's also bad news for end users. Xamarin products simply aren't very good. You can spot them a mile off. Slow, big, ugly.

My banking app just switched, I can tell. Concidently, they also have an equally ugly (and pointless) Windows Phone app that nobody was asking for.

Grayson

Not necessarily true. I used to work on an iOS app built with Xamarin and it was fast and looked native. However, the more native you make your Xamarin app look, the more UI code you create that can't be reused for other platforms. The developer of your banking app frankly just probably isn't very good. You can make native apps in Xcode that look and run like butt too.

Imparus

The apps are however quite big in size, the current app I'm working on take up 50mb, hopefully I will be able to use the new support library fully, so it stays vector and I will be able to cut a lot of its size.

Grayson

Native apps got a lot larger recently too. I noticed that the App Store build of my native iOS app almost doubled in size when I upgraded from Xcode 6 to Xcode 7, though oddly the enterprise distribution / ad hoc builds stayed the same size.

Imparus

I haven't written iOS app in Xcode, so I don't know how they compare, but the difference between xamarin android app vs something written with android studio is quite big in size

Vorastra

Concidently, they also have an equally ugly (and pointless) Windows Phone app that nobody was asking for.

Something you couldn't possibly know.

DozensOfUs

Yes, he could possibly know, Windows Mobile holds less than 1% market share, and nobody wants it. Developers ignore the platform because they cannot make money off of it, so Xamarin incorporating Windows mobile features is in fact something that nobody was asking for.

He was spot-on with his comment.

mark

No one's asking for Mac or Linux support by that logic.

Vorastra

That is such a stupid way of thinking. I hope you're never the one in a position to important business decisions. That business would suffer.

By that logic, the 3% of WP users in the US which account for 5.7 million people accounts for nothing?

Damn, you people never think past your own nose.

MG

Development resource is finite. Nodody wants companies wasting time on windows phone, as it's marketshare is less than 1%. That's barely alive, let alone niche.

Vorastra

>Development resource is finite.
And writing it using Xamarin makes it insanely cheaper...scroll up a bit. That's how this conversation started.

Robin Flikkema

Why would that happen?

adasd

ISnt it obvious?

Hyperbole

I can't help but feel this about Windows Mobile

"There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us."

Derik Taylor

Are you implying that Windows Mobile was the Batman of smartphone operating systems? Don't get me wrong, I personally enjoy Windows Mobile, but I think that role is more filled by Android.

On that note, there needs to be a Batman-themed custom ROM called Batdroid.

Hyperbole

No no! I meant Apple/Android is the Batman of smartphone OSs. The storm/a.k.a Bane is WinMo.

But I am not going to say no to Batdroid though.

Derik Taylor

Ah, gotcha! I think with being able to cross compile for Android, iOS and Windows though and with Windows Universal Apps, this could be rather interesting.

Is is just me or it seems that Microsoft is buying everything related to Android they can? I mean... first was that lockscreen app, then I think there was one or two apps that they bought, then SwiftKey and now Xamarin. Heck, if MS keeps going this way, they might aswell ditch WP core to an Android-based one (skinned Android by ms? yes, please) and add suport to run APKs on Windows.

jlangford

I think it's more about getting .Net everywhere they can, rather than slowly adopting the android ecosystem.

Roger Siegenthaler

Yet they dropped that project because java's runtime is horrible and they just really want people to use .net/C# so the learning curve for windows universal apps will be inexistent.

Dirk Disco

If you can't beat them, buy them. This is a smart move by MS. If MS can overcome the app gap I'll be back. The Windows Phone UI beats Android and Apple hands down.

someone755

I just wish there was an option other than black and white for the UI (unless they've changed that).

mark

I never saw MS as competing with xamarin, seems more like they naturally complement.

Dirk Disco

I was meaning in the grand scheme of the app gap. I agree, it's a good fit.

Predictable Dude

What's next? Microsoft bought Android from google?

Derik Taylor

Well, here is the beauty in that. They don't have to. Android is open source.

mirac

Lol no.
The best Microsoft could do is buying JetBrains and Android Studio.
But let's not give them any funny ideas, shall we..

Vorastra

You comment makes no sense.

The best Microsoft could do is buying JetBrains and Android Studio.

And Google would sell their own IDE to MS, why?

Roger Siegenthaler

Except android studio is by jetbrains, not google for the most part

Vorastra

Android Studio is based on Jetbrains' IntelliJ. Google owns and maintains it. Jetbrains even has a competing IDE called IntelliJ IDEA...

Roger Siegenthaler

exactly... google only wrote the ui explorer part of android studio... everything else is jetbrains. See CLion and understand that that's how google now supports NDK development in AndroidStuidio.

Roger Siegenthaler

And it would make perfect sense for them to buy JetBrains, and not for anything that they develop for android but for ReSharper which is the perfect complement for any .NET/C/C# development ever.

Dello

MS probably want to expand C# more into Android territory
We all know there's too many frustrated Java programmer with Android

/s

DozensOfUs

Microsoft will ruin this. They will try and use it to help their terrible Windows Mobile platform, and all other platforms will take a back seat.

mark

Yeah just like all the other cross platform apps Microsoft product.

ﺻﺵﻑﺢﺪﻋ Obama the Scmbag ﻛﺼﯙﮗﻲﮚ

The objective is: to bastardize Android apps just like Microsoft bastardized Java.